If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Federal Chewing Tobacco Minders

Nancy Pelosi remarked that the federal budget has been pared to the bone and that there were no more places to cut. Here is one:

Since 2012 the government has spent nearly $2 million on a campaign to get women to nag the men in their lives to quit using smokeless tobacco.The National Institutes of Health has sponsored a continuing grant for the Oregon Research Institute to “evaluate an innovative approach that encourages male smokeless tobacco users to quit by enlisting the support of their wives/partners, both to lead smokeless tobacco users to engage in treatment and to help them sustain abstinence.”Researchers had already “established that women can be readily recruited” to get their husbands to quit chewing tobacco, but now the project is going a step further with a multimedia push that includes a website with an interactive and tailored support plan.Researchers will conduct a randomized clinical trial to determine the effectiveness of the cessation program.The program is raising eyebrows among taxpayer watchdogs, health advocates and activists on women’s issues, who see the expenditures as wasteful and gender pandering.“American women don’t need the federal government spending money to get us to nag our husbands to stop using tobacco, we do that just fine on our own,” said Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, a conservative women’s group. “Even if it were a worthwhile effort, we are $18 trillion in debt. We simply can’t afford it.”Added Richard Manning, President of Americans for Limited Government, a spending watchdog: “One wonders if NIH has a companion grant program designed to teach dads how to cope with hostile environments in the household. With Congress in its annual appropriations season, defunding this unnecessary and destructive program should be an easy one.”

Re: Federal Chewing Tobacco Minders

This is exactly the kind of thing that has been bringing down our country for decades. The government is only supposed to take in enough money to operate, not to push an agenda.

More important, the economics of ObamaCare reward scale over competition. Benefits are standardized and premiums are de facto price-controlled. With margins compressed to commodity levels, buying more consumers via mergers is simpler than appealing to them with better products, to the extent the latter is still legal.